Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Laying Groundwork for Post-Inaugural Citizen Service

The inauguration arm of the Obama transition is organizing a "national day of service" on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend-- itself established as a time to contribute a little something extra to the world around you -- and in it, they're building the architecture for a continuing service corps beyond inauguration weekend. The project echoes the campaign: the inspiration and equipment coming from the top, with the fleshing out of events and projects bubbling from the bottom up.

If I were staying in New York for inauguration weekend, I'd find ample opportunities to serve near me, with more than 50 events within 100 miles of Brooklyn. There's a food drive at an Arab-American family center and a chance to serve at Housing Works, the AIDS/homelessness center in Manhattan. One particularly neat event: Biscotti per Carita, which seems to roughly translate to "biscotti for charity." Children and their families from an Italian school in Yonkers are bringing the cookies to children and seniors in area hospitals. Cambiamento!

A National Day of Service gives people a taste of volunteering in their communities, and it looks like the Obama organization has an eye on funneling that one day into a sustained self-organized service of some kind. A guide being distributed by organizers contains organizing techniques (grab emails, craft narratives) ripped from the campaign. A description of a sample event ends with "[S]everal volunteers help record the sign-in information, record a story from the day, and share pictures from the day." The PIC database could go to seed an ongoing citizen-service program, like a Craigslist for Service......